Summary Points:

A key component of informed consent to participate in medical research is the understanding that research is not the same as treatment.

However, studies have found that some research participants do not appreciate important differences between research and treatment, a phenomenon called “therapeutic misconception.”

A consistent definition of therapeutic misconception is missing from the literature, and this hinders attempts to define its prevalence or ways to reduce it.

This paper proposes a new definition and describes how it can be operationalized.